By Luke Voogt
Maths wunderkind Cameron Chandler has used his love of data to win the dux at Christian College Geelong with an ATAR of 99.3.
“I absolutely loved extracting meaning from numbers in the statistics coursework,” he said.
Cameron developed his passion for maths at the National Youth Science Forum, which he attended in January thanks to Geelong Rotary.
There the Belmont local discovered the different careers on offer in numbers.
“I love maths but I never knew it could be job,” he said.
The avid guitarist and former Australian representative in baseball plans to study data science at the University of Melbourne.
“The ability to use the insane quantity of data that is being collected these days for the betterment of healthcare, businesses and education is an amazing power.”
Jake Nankervis’s ATAR of 96.75 left his mother speechless – and his dad in disbelief.
“She nearly started crying she was so happy,” the former Grovedale College student told the Indy.
“I called my dad at the airport and he said ‘send a photo, I don’t believe you’. So I sent him one after he landed – I made him wait.”
Jake admitted his own surprise after scoring the highest ATAR out of Geelong’s public school students.
“I wasn’t expecting anything too great,” he said. “I didn’t think it was my result – it didn’t sink in until the next day.”
He outscored twin brother Brodie (89) following some friendly competition throughout the year.
“We do a couple of the same subjects so we wanted to best each other in those,” he said.
“We’d kind of bounce ideas of each other.”
Barwon Head’s Darbi Moody also took on some brotherly competition during his VCE quest.
He scored 97.5 to become dux of St Ignatius College – like his older brother Cooper before him 2014.
The relieved Darbi looked forward to studying biomedicine at the University of Melbourne and planned to become a neurosurgeon.
“At the end of the day I just wanted to get into my course,” he said.
A jetlagged Michael Bongiorno thought he was looking at “a joke” when he saw his ATAR of 99.55.
The former St Joseph’s student had just returned from an “immersion” trip in Uganda the night before, but couldn’t sleep until 4am due to nerves.
“I looked at the score and thought nah that’s not mine,” he said.
The Geelong West local was waiting nervously this week to see if he earned an interview with Monash University to study medicine.
Geelong College’s Tom Yang was one of 36 students in Victoria to achieve a perfect score of 99.95.
“It was unbelievable,” the Point Cook local said.
Tom studied a minimum two hours a night to record the highest score at a Geelong school and earn the Chancellor’s Scholarship at the University of Melbourne.
“It’s been a tough,” he said.
But Tom said he would have to wait until studying science at the university before deciding his future.
“I’m still not quite sure what I want to do.”
